No Marketing, No Sales, No Business

I see a lot of business owners who run away from sales, and it just blows my mind. I mean, without sales, you don’t have a business. A lot of people think of sales in a negative way. I especially see this with service-based businesses where the owner is typically the technician or the one doing the work. They tend to feel the same way about marketing. But without marketing, there are no sales, and without sales, you won’t be a business owner for very long, no matter how amazing you are at what you do.

If you want to succeed in business, it’s up to you – and only you – to brush up on your sales and marketing skills. But, in order to do this, you have to work on you. But what does that mean? I’ll tell you. Working on you means reading books on business and personal development, hiring a coach, joining a mastermind, attending conferences or workshops, continuing your education, and focusing on personal growth.

Working on yourself also means doing things in your business, like establishing software, such as a CRM to help manage your leads and build a sales pipeline. If you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, that’s a problem. CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management Software. Everybody in business needs to have one in place. And if you don’t have one in place, you need to get the fuck off the computer right now and go invest in one.  A CRM is imperative for you to keep track of people who come into your pipeline and to follow up with them as well. It also, if it’s set up properly, helps you manage and figure out where your leads are coming from, which is then going to tell you what is working as far as your marketing goes.

When it comes to marketing, you need to have a strategy. It doesn’t have to be long or overly complicated, either. Really, all it is, is you going out there and telling the world, “Hey, this is my business. This is what I do.” You should be sharing who you are and what you do on your social media profiles. You can start a Facebook group. You can start a website and share it there. There are so many options these days, and most of them are either free or of very little cost to you. This applies to any business. I’m not just talking about GPS tracking guys. No matter what business you’re in, you need to go out there and you need to market to your people. In this day and age, no marketing isn’t an option.

Do you remember when direct mail was the jam for business marketing? No one’s doing direct mail anymore. These days, it doesn’t cost that much money to have something short and sweet printed up. If you have a list of people or addresses of people that are your target market, send a mailer out, send some postcards. You want to stay in front of these people, right? With everyone being slammed by online marketing day in and day out, a mailer just might be a good way to stand out and be remembered. Don’t get me wrong, online marketing is absolutely a priority, but try thinking outside the box when it comes to how you get in front of your ideal customers. And trust me, if they’re interested, they WILL turn to the internet and social media to learn more about you.

The number one rule in sales these days is that people buy from you when they know, like, and trust you. Your marketing should let people get to know you and your business. You want them to become familiar with your logo, your name, your brand, and what you do. Your online content is a huge part of your marketing. Whether written posts, snapshots, or videos, the content you produce, even on your personal profile, needs to reflect who you are as a person and a brand.

I want to talk for a minute about using video in your marketing. Video is an extremely powerful tool to reach your audience. And I get it, most people do NOT like doing video right at first. It’s uncomfortable as fuck. But it gets easier, and video is the number #1 way to market your business online right now. So, don’t tell me you’re scared of going on video. I don’t want to hear it. I bet you’ve been scared of plenty of things in your life, but you’ve gone ahead and done them anyway. And really, at this point in time, everyone’s on video. So just get over it. If you’re refusing to do video and leaving that tool out of your marketing toolbox, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Once you’ve got your plan for reaching out to potential customers and growing your online presence, your marketing has to then flow as leads into your sales pipeline, which is going to be your CRM system. Your CRM system is then going to be able to help you manage the people that come into your pipeline. The average sale takes 12 touches to close. Okay? I know that probably 99.9% of you reading this are not following up with your leads 12 times or more.

The honest truth is, even with a system in place, it’s still difficult sometimes. But, if we leverage technology such as a CRM system, we’re able to send out reminders to ourselves that say, “Hey, don’t forget to call Joe Smith tomorrow at three o’clock because he’s interested in 10 dash cameras. Follow up with him.” With a CRM system in place, you should also be sending out automated emails. You could even be sending out automated text messages to that person. Every time that you send that information out, it counts towards one of those 12 touches, right? And sometimes it takes more than 12 touches. When I say 12 touches, I mean, shit, it might take 20 touches. You know, there are some GPS companies that I had to chase over two years before I got on their radar and started doing work for them.

If you want to make the sale, you have to follow up with every lead, and if you’re not keeping track of these conversations, you’re leaving money on the table. If you don’t have all your customer’s contact information in one centralized location, one database, you’re just wasting time. You are blowing your efficiency out of the water. And remember, no sales means no business. You can’t keep your doors open if you aren’t bringing in money, and that means making sales.

There are so many different CRMs out there. Pipedrive is one, but that’s mostly just for sales. MailChimp is another one that a lot of people use and is pretty good. I’ll be going over the different programs and tech that are available to business owners in another post, but for now, I want to leave you with this:

Don’t be afraid of technology.

Make the fucking videos.

Let your audience get to know you and your business.

Automate whatever you can and get a CRM system in place ASAP.

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